‘When I heard the news my heart sank’

CATHOLIC women’s rights activists reacted with dismay to the election of conservative German Joseph Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI.

"When I heard the announcement, my heart sank, quite frankly," Sister Maureen Fiedler of We Are Church, a global movement of Catholics committed to renewal, said after the 78-year-old Ratzinger was elected.

"One of the major changes I would have hoped for in a new Pope was an openness to women," said Fiedler, a member of the Sisters of Loretto order. "He simply has no record that would suggest that he's open ... to more than 50% of the Catholic community, to more than 50% of the world," she said.